Curated playlist
Fusional languages
- Irish languageIreland aimed for 250,000 daily Irish speakers by 2030, but the number fell.
- Danish languageDanish once shaped the placenames of Yorkshire. Today even Swedes and Norwegians often struggle to follow it.
- Norwegian languageNorway has two official written forms of Norwegian. Students must study the one that isn't their own.
- German languageMartin Luther based his German Bible translation on the speech of Saxony.
- Italian languageIn 1861, only 2.5% of Italians could properly speak standard Italian. Most spoke their own city tongues instead.
- Portuguese languageVietnamese is written with help from Portuguese spelling. A 1651 dictionary built its modern writing on Portuguese.
- French languageFrench is growing fastest in sub-Saharan Africa, not in Paris. Population growth and new schools drive it.
- Slavic languagesAs recently as the 10th century, all Slavic speakers spoke essentially the same tongue.
- HindiIn 2010, the Gujarat High Court said Hindi is not India's national language. The constitution never names one.
- Spanish languageThe country with the most native Spanish speakers is not Spain. It is Mexico.
- ArabicArabic builds whole families of words from three bare consonants. The root k-t-b gives book, writer, desk and library.
- LatinVatican City has the world's only cash machine that gives instructions in Latin.
- English languageThe words they, them and their in English came from Norse. They pushed out the Anglo-Saxon forms hie, him and hera.
- Coptic languageCoptic has no native speakers, yet it is heard in churches every week. It is the final form of the Egyptian language.
- Greek languageGreek has been written for at least 3,400 years. A Messenia clay tablet makes it the oldest recorded living language.